Bob Mueller finally caught up with Bob Bolus. Last Friday, the special prosecutor investigating Russian meddling in American politics indicted 16 Russian nationals and groups on charges of conspiring to defraud the United States.
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Most arson cases are built on circumstantial evidence - testimony from witnesses, motive, means, a series of matching pieces cobbled together.

Physical evidence is a rare gift, said city Fire Inspector Jim Lunney.

"Arson's the toughest case to prove, just because all of your material is all really destroyed in the fire itself," he said.

But with the help of accelerant-sniffing dogs, electronic monitors and forensic labs, investigators can locate and analyze even the smallest piece of evidence.

Former Lackawanna County Assistant District Attorney Corey Kolcharno worked for eight years with fire investigators, watching how their searches were aided by one of their most reliable assets - accelerant-sniffing dogs.

"We put a lot of stock in the dog's ability to detect things, sometimes even better than what the lab would test, just because of the sensitivity of the dog's nose and its ability to detect petroleum-based products such as gasoline, kerosene, lighter fluid, all of them," Mr. Kolcharno said.

Training a nose

Cpl. Michael Ruhf, K-9 section supervisor for the state police, said there are two accelerant-sniffing dogs that travel throughout the state aiding at suspected arson scenes.

The state police use a "drive-based training," using the dogs' natural instinct to hunt and track by hiding a toy exposed to the smell of an accelerant. Once the dogs locate the toy, they "passively indicate" they've found something by staring at the spot and wait to be rewarded with their toy.

The dog will identify an area of interest, a floorboard with traces of an accelerant or a piece of gasoline-spattered shirt stuffed in the washing machine of a suspect's house.

Clyde Liddick, a forensic scientist at the state police lab in Harrisburg, said the samples are tested with extremely sensitive instruments in the chemical trace unit of the lab. Gasoline is the most common accelerant used in arsons because of easy accessibility, Mr. Liddick said.

In the end, evidence and forensics are another small piece to the arson investigation puzzle, along with circumstantial evidence, witness testimony, fire patterns and inspectors' experience and intuition, said Scranton police Fire Inspector Martin Monahan.

"All of that comes together in a neat little package after it's investigated," he said.

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